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🎯 THIS Is a Good GOLD MARKET! 🎯 - (Silver Price Too) · SILVER / GOLD / $UFD: Surviving Global Economic Shifts | RONS BASEMENT

• 0:00
  In a good gold market, in a $2400 gold market and, and in
• 0:04
  case any question, we're in a good gold market, right?
• 0:07
  Like there's no disputing, despite the fact that you have,
• 0:10
  you know, ETFs until recently, you've still been selling gold
• 0:13
  into a good gold market. We've got a good.
• 0:16
  Gold market, Historic moves in the gold price, but the junior
• 0:24
  mining sector has yet to catch up.
• 0:27
  Is this presenting us with an opportunity to participate in
• 0:31
  significant capital appreciation as we move into the coming
• 0:36
  quarters and years? Today, we're pleased to be
• 0:39
  joined by Dan Wilton. He's the CEO of First Mining
• 0:42
  Gold. He's going to share with us his
• 0:44
  thoughts on what's going on in the general gold market and
• 0:48
  specifically with his company. Dan, welcome to Ron's Basement.
• 0:52
  Ron, always a pleasure to be back in the basement.
• 0:55
  Well, we were talking before we came on how we're both kind of
• 0:58
  perplexed with what's going on right now in the sector.
• 1:02
  We've got this historic high gold price and I think it's safe
• 1:07
  to say historic value propositions being offered by
• 1:11
  all of the junior mining stocks. Do you have any thoughts on what
• 1:14
  what might be going on out there?
• 1:16
  You know, lots of lots of speculation.
• 1:19
  We've seen these these cyclical moves before, right?
• 1:23
  Those of us have been around the cycle for a while know that that
• 1:28
  pace of catch up comes in in waves.
• 1:32
  And I think, you know, we're seeing it in the in the large
• 1:35
  cap golds. Now you're finally starting to
• 1:37
  see gold equities that are to getting a little bit of a bid
• 1:41
  here on the back of the rise in the gold price.
• 1:44
  Not nearly as much as as you would expect.
• 1:46
  I think you just have to go back to, you know, back to 2020 and
• 1:50
  recognize that that was in the run up to a much lower gold
• 1:54
  price and you had equities, even large cap equities that were
• 1:59
  multiples of where they are now. Still, you know, I think we're
• 2:05
  just this this catch up game takes time for the trickle down
• 2:09
  to come. It hasn't really hit in the
• 2:12
  producers yet, but it will it will and we're we're going to
• 2:15
  see that over the next couple of quarters.
• 2:17
  You know, these some of these larger cap stocks are up 30 to
• 2:21
  50% and at some point investors start allocating to the sector
• 2:26
  as they chase performance. And when that happens,
• 2:29
  eventually you get, you know, the trickle down effect to the
• 2:32
  poor developers like us where people are looking for value.
• 2:36
  And so that's the interesting opportunity we see right now,
• 2:40
  Ron, is that opportunity to kind of front run that trade.
• 2:44
  Everyone knows that it's coming. It has to.
• 2:46
  It has to for a lot of very fundamental reasons, including
• 2:50
  the fact that the industry just has not made investments in
• 2:55
  productive capacity over the last 12 years.
• 2:58
  Yeah, Yeah. I'm gonna pull up this chart,
• 3:00
  Dan, from your investor presentation that shows the
• 3:05
  performance of gold since what is that, January of 2000. 22.
• 3:10
  Yeah. And and when we look at the GDX,
• 3:12
  the big, the big gold miners and the GDXJ, the junior producing
• 3:17
  gold mining companies, they've kind of sort of kept pace with
• 3:21
  the gold price increase. But when you look at the junior,
• 3:25
  the development sector, the black line, it's so far behind.
• 3:28
  And, and we were talking before we came online, I asked you the
• 3:31
  question and said, isn't this all supposed to be inverted in
• 3:35
  a, in a historic perspective, like the miners typically
• 3:39
  actually outperform gold and the development companies in a
• 3:43
  healthy market will even outperform the, the senior, the
• 3:47
  senior companies. Yeah.
• 3:49
  I think that all just speaks to the fact, Ron, that we're in
• 3:52
  early stages of this rally, like very early stages.
• 3:56
  You know, you've seen, you've seen some of those.
• 3:59
  What, what I find really interesting in that chart is
• 4:02
  just in the last, you know, half inch of the line where you
• 4:06
  actually see even in the last few weeks, you've had gold
• 4:10
  producers really start to tick up and you've had gold
• 4:14
  developers tick down pretty substantially.
• 4:17
  So, you know, that gap is widening up and in every other
• 4:21
  time in my career where I've seen this gap widen out, it gets
• 4:25
  closed by the M and A market eventually, eventually larger
• 4:30
  companies, you know, who can go through periods where they
• 4:33
  forget that they're in an extractive industry.
• 4:36
  And if they don't replace their reserves, you know, at some
• 4:40
  point they get into massive reserve decline that we're
• 4:44
  coming to a point where those lack of investments that have
• 4:48
  been made in reserve replacement over the years are, are going to
• 4:51
  start to become make it more and more difficult for them to
• 4:55
  either find or, you know, ultimately add to their existing
• 4:58
  asset bases. So at some point they're going
• 5:01
  to have to come and buy new projects to develop.
• 5:04
  And no one's wanted to do that in an inflationary environment.
• 5:08
  I think we're knock on wood feeling pretty good about the
• 5:12
  fact that I think we're through the worst of what we saw as
• 5:16
  inflation in the mining sector in terms of, you know, input
• 5:19
  cost inflation, labor cost inflation, capital cost
• 5:22
  escalation. I think we've I think we've
• 5:24
  feels like we've seen the worst of that.
• 5:26
  Now you're seeing it in the results in, in the in the gold
• 5:29
  producers. So that to me says again, we're
• 5:32
  coming to the time where larger companies are gonna have to
• 5:37
  replace their reserves and resources.
• 5:39
  And when you look at the amazing value that a lot of these
• 5:43
  developers trading at, it's pretty compelling right now.
• 5:46
  Yeah. I like, I like to call that gap
• 5:48
  that we see on this chart between the developers and the
• 5:51
  gold price and even that area above it, that's the opportunity
• 5:55
  gap. That's the opportunity.
• 5:58
  You have to brand that, Ron. That's, that's brilliant.
• 6:00
  I've not heard that before. Or the, the, the capital
• 6:03
  appreciation opportunity gap. You know, you, you talked about
• 6:06
  the, about the big producers and needing to replace their
• 6:11
  resources. I'm going to go to the next
• 6:12
  slide here and I just find this astounding.
• 6:16
  I know that your company First Mining Gold has two of the
• 6:19
  largest development stage projects in Canada.
• 6:23
  But when I when I look at this graph which shows us the amount
• 6:28
  of gold that's been discovered in just some of the more recent
• 6:31
  years. If I just go back 10 years to
• 6:33
  2014, it looks like there's almost been no gold discovered.
• 6:38
  Dan, any any comments on that? Well, I, I think that's the
• 6:42
  reality of it. Roland, honestly, you, you know,
• 6:46
  I, the funny part about this graph is it, it mirrors almost
• 6:51
  my career in terms of when I started working in and around
• 6:56
  the mining sector is that the, you know, the very left hand
• 6:59
  part of this graph. And there were a lot of big
• 7:02
  discoveries at the times like major world class mines.
• 7:06
  The reality is those discoveries are coming fewer and further
• 7:09
  between. And this is we came across this
• 7:13
  chart of of data that was aggregated by by S&P.
• 7:18
  You know, it's extensive research that shows they're
• 7:22
  actually spending a lot more money now even, you know, versus
• 7:25
  historically spending a lot more money on exploration.
• 7:28
  It's just more difficult to find things.
• 7:30
  And the reality is all of the easy stuff to be found by and
• 7:35
  large has been found. That's just the exploration
• 7:39
  business. You first find what's on surface
• 7:41
  and then, you know, you start going after deeper, more
• 7:44
  difficult deposits in more difficult jurisdictions, more
• 7:48
  difficult terrain. It's a, it's a bit of a logical
• 7:51
  consequence that, you know, for you to find more, I think you're
• 7:53
  going to have to see exponential exploration spend on what's
• 7:57
  there. But it's, it's continued to
• 8:00
  provide this big gap in terms of ongoing annual production.
• 8:06
  And, you know, how are those reserves being replaced now?
• 8:09
  There's always games that producers can play for a short
• 8:13
  period of time. And we've seen it happening over
• 8:15
  the last couple of years where they drop their cut off grade
• 8:19
  for resources, they increase their gold price for calculating
• 8:22
  resources and reserves. It brings more in around their
• 8:25
  existing deposits. And fair enough, you're in a
• 8:28
  higher gold price environment. But that game has a limit as
• 8:31
  well. These companies are going to
• 8:34
  need to add, you know, millions and 10s of millions of of Oz in
• 8:40
  order to, you know, ultimately give themselves the productive
• 8:44
  runway, you know, going forward. And we're starting to see some
• 8:48
  of these big mines that were built in the last decade, you
• 8:52
  know, are actually coming toward the end of their mine lines.
• 8:55
  So that reserve replacement is becoming more and more
• 8:58
  important. Yeah, I think visually when I
• 9:01
  look at this chart, I mean it from left to right.
• 9:04
  I mean, back in 1990, even the mid 90s, we were having years
• 9:09
  where over 200 million ounces of gold were being discovered.
• 9:14
  And again, when I go to 2014 to present, it looks like you know,
• 9:18
  maybe 2025 million, five million, 10 million ounces of
• 9:23
  gold per year. And when you look at the amount
• 9:26
  of money being spent, the black line, the budget, they're
• 9:29
  spending more money, but obviously not finding as much
• 9:33
  gold in that. That could be an opportunity of
• 9:36
  or a company like First Mining who has two huge projects in
• 9:40
  Canada could be there to fill the bill.
• 9:43
  But the market is yet to recognize that, right?
• 9:46
  The valuations have have yet to catch up.
• 9:49
  And it could be an opportunity like not nobody has a crystal
• 9:53
  ball and we're not giving financial advice, but it sure
• 9:56
  feels like a compelling value proposition when you run the
• 10:00
  numbers on a company like First Mining and look at, you know,
• 10:03
  the total number of Oz of gold that are in the ground, in the
• 10:07
  ground safe in Canada that have already been discovered, right?
• 10:12
  There's decades of work that have gone into drilling and
• 10:17
  establishing those resources. And I want to point that out to
• 10:20
  our viewers. Well, First Mining Dan's company
• 10:24
  and Dan of course can correct me if I'm wrong, but you're a
• 10:26
  development stage company, you know, the gold is already there.
• 10:30
  Like I just previously said, the money's already been spent.
• 10:33
  The work has been done. Now it's a, it's the process of
• 10:37
  working through the permitting process.
• 10:38
  And can you give us an update? Obviously the two flagship
• 10:42
  projects, Spring Pool in Ontario, Du Parquet in Quebec.
• 10:46
  Actually you had just some recent news come out about Du
• 10:49
  Parquet. What's the latest on the Quebec
• 10:52
  projects? Yeah.
• 10:53
  So we'll start at at Du Parquet put out some new exploration
• 10:57
  results yesterday. I think that I I demonstrate
• 11:03
  what we've been saying all along, which is that, you know,
• 11:06
  we have a, a huge resource endowment there.
• 11:08
  It's three and a half million ounces of measured and
• 11:10
  indicated, another two and a half million ounces of inferred,
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  you know, located in the middle of the most sought after gold
• 11:19
  district on the planet. So that alone is not really
• 11:23
  recognized. And I think when you understand
• 11:25
  what's gone into developing those resources, 270,000 meters
• 11:30
  of drilling, just the replacement cost of the work
• 11:32
  that's gone into it is easily $100 million.
• 11:36
  So, you know, I think there's phenomenal value there.
• 11:39
  But what we've been saying all along is that it's just
• 11:43
  scratching the surface, right? There are hardly any drill holes
• 11:46
  below 600 meters in, in the Duparque deposit.
• 11:50
  They mine 500 meters down in the 1940s and 1950s.
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  And so that to us gives you know, real line of sight that we
• 11:59
  we're we're very confident this deposit continues at depth.
• 12:03
  Just about every drill hole that's drilled at depth
• 12:06
  encounters more mineralization. But the important part here is
• 12:10
  that you have to be able to find higher grade gold the deeper you
• 12:14
  go. And that's part of what is
• 12:16
  really important about these drill results that we put out
• 12:19
  yesterday is that James Maxwell and Caroline Pinar and our
• 12:22
  exploration team have been able to identify, you know, very
• 12:27
  systematically through about a year's worth of compilation
• 12:30
  work, identify key priority structures they thought held
• 12:35
  higher grade gold. And sure enough, you know, we're
• 12:37
  drilling what are some very interesting intercepts, you
• 12:41
  know, certainly some in the open pit that aren't that deep, you
• 12:44
  know, 10 meters or three grams plus.
• 12:46
  And then being able to follow those higher grade areas of
• 12:50
  mineralization to depth. And that's where in the
• 12:52
  Abbatibi, it's not at all uncommon that you see those
• 12:56
  higher grade zones get wider and higher grade as you go to depth.
• 13:00
  So, you know, it's a really, I think, interesting demonstration
• 13:05
  of what we've been saying all along.
• 13:06
  We think this deposit, you know, starting where it is today is a
• 13:10
  phenomenal endowment, but we're just scratching the surface.
• 13:13
  This is a place you're going to be mining for a long, long time.
• 13:16
  And and as you're going deeper, the idea would be like you said
• 13:20
  that you would find higher grade deposits down there.
• 13:23
  Would that mean the potential for for for going underground
• 13:28
  with mining? Yeah.
• 13:29
  And even in our in our PEA, we outlined really a big bulk
• 13:33
  tonnage underground deposit really extending kind of the
• 13:38
  mineralization from the bottom of the pits or just below the
• 13:41
  bottom of what we saw as the economic open pits.
• 13:43
  We know that there's economic mineralization to depth.
• 13:46
  The trick is again finding the areas of higher grade, those
• 13:50
  areas of structural control that you know you can tag into
• 13:55
  something that you know is going to be more economic to help
• 13:58
  drive the infrastructure to depth.
• 14:01
  Now we don't particularly need to worry about that given the
• 14:04
  size of the deposit and where it is.
• 14:06
  This might be, you know, an opportunity for a number of
• 14:09
  years from now, but strategically it's really
• 14:13
  important because that's where you just have to kind of follow
• 14:17
  the story of what's happened at the Canadian Malartic project,
• 14:20
  which Agnico now owns 100% of. They had an open pit, you know,
• 14:24
  not too dissimilar to what we have at Duparque, you know,
• 14:27
  turned it into the biggest gold mine in Quebec.
• 14:30
  And now they're in the next phase where they're going to be
• 14:32
  underground mining massive wide Stopes at, at, you know, around
• 14:38
  2G per ton, which you know, is certainly what we were looking
• 14:42
  at in our, in our PEA. But these big Stopes are they're
• 14:47
  going to be producing 20,000 tons a day from underground.
• 14:50
  So, and they're going 1.8 kilometers down, right?
• 14:54
  We're only still talking 500 meters.
• 14:57
  So it opens up all of everywhere in between those levels for
• 15:01
  exploration potential. And that's what I think
• 15:03
  strategically can get some of the bigger mining companies
• 15:06
  really excited. Are we really into something
• 15:08
  here that's going to be 1520 million oz plus and we think
• 15:13
  there's every bit of possibility for that at Duper?
• 15:15
  K and, and based upon that graph that we looked at earlier that
• 15:19
  showed just how few and far between new discoveries are
• 15:24
  within the the gold mining sector, I would think that the
• 15:27
  big companies will want to get excited.
• 15:30
  I think another thing that they'll get excited about not
• 15:32
  just with the Du Parquet project in Quebec, but also Spring Pool
• 15:36
  in Ontario is the location and, and that it's in, you know, a
• 15:41
  very safe jurisdiction. There have been years and years
• 15:46
  of work already put in to kind of work these projects to where
• 15:51
  they are within the development and and permitting process.
• 15:55
  And that's going to be real appealing to the to the big
• 15:58
  companies, especially in a world that's becoming, you know,
• 16:01
  geopolitically a little more, let's just say troubling for for
• 16:07
  all of us. I would wholeheartedly agree
• 16:10
  with that. I think there's never been a
• 16:12
  time in the mining industry where location has mattered more
• 16:17
  than it does now. You know, rule of law, there's a
• 16:21
  lot of jurisdictions that for a long time were considered
• 16:25
  absolute tier one that have become more and more challenging
• 16:28
  over time. So you know, one place that I
• 16:31
  think everyone can agree is a great place to own a mine.
• 16:33
  Well, two places, Ontario and Quebec, you know, and, and
• 16:38
  you've. Flip a coin, right?
• 16:40
  Yeah. I know exactly well, why choose
• 16:41
  we have both. You know, that's it's it's
• 16:46
  phenomenally underappreciated right now.
• 16:49
  But I think it's just one of those boxes that someone who's
• 16:52
  going to look to replace their reserves, you know, a couple of
• 16:55
  years from now looking for projects that can be built.
• 16:58
  Because for all that we were looking at discoveries there.
• 17:01
  That's resource definition right in in that last chart you need
• 17:05
  to understand is not every 5 million oz deposit plus is going
• 17:09
  to become a mine. A lot of them have real
• 17:13
  challenges. You still have to understand the
• 17:15
  economics of those big projects and that's where you know from
• 17:19
  the point of OK, great, we have a resource from that point to
• 17:23
  producing gold on average in Canada in the gold industry,
• 17:29
  well from from discovery to production is now I think an
• 17:32
  average of about 17 years. If you're looking to buy gold,
• 17:35
  silver or platinum, do yourself a favor and check out Pimbex,
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• 17:54
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• 17:57
  And be sure to tell him that you're from Ron's Basement.
• 18:00
  Is it fair to say that the Duparque project and, and all
• 18:04
  these I'll throw spring that they're advanced development
• 18:08
  stage? I mean, because like you said,
• 18:09
  it takes years and years to get, you know, once you discover a
• 18:15
  deposit, then it takes so many years to go through the
• 18:18
  permitting process. And I think part of that is
• 18:21
  maybe what makes Canada, you know, a premium location.
• 18:25
  But, but first mining has has already done a lot of that leg
• 18:29
  work, right. You're not at the finish line
• 18:31
  yet per Southeast, but you are, you know, 50 percent, 75% along
• 18:36
  that path. And, and, and again, you know,
• 18:39
  you're, you're a, you're a premium location within a, a
• 18:43
  premium location. Yeah.
• 18:45
  So we, we kind of frame it as getting to the starting line,
• 18:48
  not finish line because you know, you get your environmental
• 18:51
  assessment approvals and then it lets you start to do some more
• 18:54
  interesting things in terms of getting your project ready for
• 18:57
  production, but or construction at that point at spring pole.
• 19:03
  Sorry. You know, we entered the
• 19:04
  environmental assessment process federally and provincially in
• 19:07
  2018. So we're 6 1/2 years into this
• 19:11
  process already. And while maybe there are a
• 19:15
  couple of those years, you know, during COVID, maybe a couple of
• 19:19
  years where it wasn't as resourced as well as it needed
• 19:22
  to be, there's no real shortcuts to this.
• 19:25
  So while, while we always say, you know, it's important that
• 19:29
  the only thing worse than being where we are is being anywhere
• 19:31
  before where we are in a permitting process, right,
• 19:35
  'cause you're gonna have to go through it.
• 19:36
  It's gonna take some time and there really are no shortcuts on
• 19:41
  on time or quality of the work that you're doing.
• 19:43
  So lots of work that that has been done, lots of work we will
• 19:48
  obviously continue to do. But at at Spring Pool, we are
• 19:51
  submitting our final environmental assessment
• 19:54
  document in September and targeting you know final
• 19:58
  environmental assessment approval at the end of 2025.
• 20:01
  It's a major, major milestone in Catalyst because I think if you
• 20:06
  go back and look at the history and the value at which bigger
• 20:09
  companies came into large development projects in Canada
• 20:14
  pre construction, we've got a slide in our investor deck that
• 20:17
  talks to it. But there are a number of those,
• 20:20
  if not most of those are financed or required.
• 20:24
  At values of $500 million to you know, $1.1 billion over the last
• 20:30
  few years, so pre construction before a shovel's gone to the
• 20:34
  ground, that's the value of having those resources and
• 20:38
  having the permits to move it forward.
• 20:40
  So is there value in US going through this process?
• 20:43
  Absolutely. We've always said, you know,
• 20:45
  when Keith set the company up in 2015, they were buying great
• 20:49
  resources at $10.00 an ounce or less.
• 20:52
  But the real home run is getting these resources to a point where
• 20:56
  someone else will come and acquire them for 100 to $200.00
• 20:58
  an ounce. That that's usually what happens
• 21:02
  after you get kind of through the permitting process and where
• 21:05
  we are, where we're kind of making great progress in going
• 21:08
  and you get a little bit of competitive tension at a time
• 21:13
  where you have an escalating gold price and wonderful things
• 21:16
  can happen. So lots of hard work in front of
• 21:19
  us yet, but you know when, when those milestones are 18 or 20
• 21:23
  months away versus you know, where it was 5 1/2 years ago
• 21:28
  when, when I started as CEO. Every now and then you got to
• 21:32
  take a step back and and recognize just how far we've
• 21:36
  come, just how much real work we've done to advance these
• 21:38
  projects. And, and there and there's a
• 21:40
  number of internal catalysts, there's a number of external
• 21:43
  catalysts. I mean, that chart that we
• 21:45
  looked at at the very beginning, you know, if that goes back to
• 21:48
  more historic norms and mining stocks actually outperform and
• 21:52
  provide leverage to the gold price and the development
• 21:55
  companies even more leverage. There's just a lot of things
• 22:00
  that could happen. You know, one, one thing that we
• 22:02
  don't consider is, you know, Citibank for instance, is
• 22:05
  predicting that we could get the $3000 gold next year.
• 22:08
  I mean, things can change the, the complexion.
• 22:12
  I think a lot of people when it comes to 1st mining gold or, or
• 22:16
  any of the other development companies like, well, I'll wait,
• 22:19
  I'll wait. It may be too late.
• 22:21
  At some point, you know things will happen, the market will
• 22:27
  anticipate and suddenly, you know, people could find
• 22:31
  themselves in a situation where they they potentially miss the
• 22:34
  boat. I think that's exactly right.
• 22:36
  And the way that I think about it is, you know, this is your
• 22:39
  opportunity to get the, the first one or two X on, on what
• 22:44
  could be a 10X return, right? And if you miss out on the first
• 22:47
  two or three X, then you know, you're into a, you know, 3 to 5X
• 22:51
  return, which is not bad, right? That's, but that's where where
• 22:55
  most investors will end up by, you know, you never try and time
• 23:00
  the bottom timing the bottom is, is a mug's game.
• 23:04
  But being invested while you see these massive disconnects in
• 23:08
  fundamental value, that's that's the real opportunity for the
• 23:13
  value investor who's looking at the sector right now.
• 23:15
  Because Ron, as far as I'm concerned, it is an
• 23:19
  inevitability that larger producing companies are going to
• 23:23
  have to replace the reserves. That is a true, it has to
• 23:27
  happen, right, or they go out of business.
• 23:30
  And it's never been cheaper for them to replace those reserves.
• 23:34
  There's never been less risk in them replacing those reserves by
• 23:37
  buying a developer than there is right now when you look at the
• 23:40
  difference in valuation between where producers are trading and
• 23:44
  where developers are trading. So you know, they've all been
• 23:46
  afraid of CapEx for a long time. They've not wanted to go through
• 23:49
  permitting processes. All of those are major catalysts
• 23:53
  that we can de risk this project in the next couple of years.
• 23:57
  So I think, I think very, very bright days ahead.
• 24:00
  Yeah, And I'm gonna pull up another chart here just to put
• 24:03
  things in context. This shows the du Parquet and
• 24:08
  Spring Pool project and just how few projects there are of of
• 24:13
  that scale in Canada. Any any comments on this Stan?
• 24:18
  Yeah. Listen, I think there's a couple
• 24:19
  of important takeaways on this chart.
• 24:23
  Number one, you have to look at all the ones that are in
• 24:25
  construction right here, right? What a lot of people don't
• 24:28
  appreciate is that we've had probably say the industry hasn't
• 24:32
  been investing. You know the few places they
• 24:34
  have been investing, one of them is Canada.
• 24:37
  And you've seen a number of these big projects attract
• 24:40
  billions of dollars of capital to get built.
• 24:43
  And that to me in in what has been, as we just showed a really
• 24:47
  challenging time for gold equities and for companies to
• 24:51
  raise money. So when you talk about what are
• 24:53
  the most strategic assets in the gold industry, I think big
• 24:58
  projects in Canada unquestionably have demonstrated
• 25:01
  themselves to be the most strategic assets.
• 25:04
  They will get acquired by, you know, gold producers at some
• 25:08
  point have a much higher percentage here than I think you
• 25:11
  do anywhere else, maybe Australia, but you know, even
• 25:15
  than the US, just because there are more opportunities here than
• 25:18
  there are in the US. But what's really interesting,
• 25:21
  Ron, if you have the other deck that's up here, you look at the
• 25:24
  next slide and what this opportunity set looks like when
• 25:29
  you take out the ones that are in construction, cause most of
• 25:32
  those ones in construction are actually going to be producing
• 25:37
  gold by the end of this year. And then that opportunity set
• 25:41
  looks very small. We've got two of the top ten and
• 25:45
  I think importantly one of the, you know, one of the next
• 25:48
  projects to get environmental assessment approval.
• 25:51
  And you know, speaking realistically about it, one of
• 25:54
  very few projects, maybe two depending on what we do with
• 25:58
  Duparque. But maybe two of the projects
• 26:02
  that could potentially be put into production before 20-30.
• 26:08
  Because there's if, if you're not well advanced in that
• 26:11
  federal and provincial permitting process right now,
• 26:13
  like you're just, you're not going to get there in order to
• 26:16
  make a construction decision to build a mine before 20-30.
• 26:19
  There's. Actually come from a period of
• 26:22
  magnificent abundance of development projects in Canada,
• 26:26
  like 7 ready to build at one time.
• 26:28
  We're coming to a point of like maximum scarcity of projects to
• 26:32
  build, which is a great place to be if you're the one who owns
• 26:36
  projects. Right that are already there.
• 26:39
  There's no you know when you go to an amusement park and you can
• 26:42
  pay extra to get a skip the line pass.
• 26:44
  There are no skip the line passes for permitting gold mines
• 26:48
  in Canada or, or are there Dan? No skip the line passes for big
• 26:53
  projects, generally you have to go through, you have to go
• 26:57
  through a combined federal and provincial process at some point
• 27:01
  where there are opportunities and we've seen, you know, a
• 27:04
  number of other companies do this is, is looking at that
• 27:06
  staged development opportunity. We we don't have that as much at
• 27:11
  Spring Pool as we think we might at Du Parquet, which is an
• 27:15
  ability to start smaller and potentially grow, you know,
• 27:18
  start with a smaller capital project and grow a resource over
• 27:22
  time, not the resource, but you know, kind of grow your
• 27:24
  production over time because we're so not resource limited at
• 27:29
  Du Parquet. We have such an extensive,
• 27:32
  extensive resource there. Even our PEA that we put out
• 27:35
  only it only produced, you know less than half of the oz that we
• 27:39
  have at the project right now. So lots more work to see how we
• 27:43
  continue to develop those other ounces.
• 27:45
  Yeah, very interesting. And, and as I was talking about
• 27:47
  the skip the line pass, if you're a big gold producer and
• 27:51
  you want to get a skip the line pass, you can get it from first
• 27:54
  mining gold, but you will be paying a big, big premium,
• 27:57
  right? Because you've, you've been
• 27:59
  waiting patiently working your way, doing your work through
• 28:02
  this permitting process for a number of years.
• 28:06
  And I think that goes back to what what you said earlier.
• 28:09
  Let me let me pull up this slide, Dan, because we, we don't
• 28:12
  talk enough about the other projects in the portfolio and I
• 28:17
  think they're important. You've got the Pickle Crow
• 28:20
  project, the Holbrook project and Cameron as well.
• 28:24
  Can you what, what do you think when you look at that that
• 28:29
  portfolio of those three projects?
• 28:32
  You know, I think we, you've said many times before we don't
• 28:36
  really get much value for these other projects.
• 28:39
  And the reality is when you look at them on their own merits, I
• 28:43
  mean, we love these projects. We know them very well because
• 28:47
  we used to own 100% of them and still do at Cameron.
• 28:50
  So you know, I, I think while we, we often really focus in on
• 28:55
  the scarcity of 5 million oz plus gold projects, the same
• 29:00
  really can be said for million ounce gold projects.
• 29:03
  Like there, there just aren't really that many million ounce
• 29:06
  resources in Canada that can be moved forward.
• 29:10
  Our partners are doing a good job.
• 29:11
  I think what's important is just the amount of money that our
• 29:14
  partners have spent on these projects and advancing them,
• 29:17
  growing them. I mean, the, well, I'm looking
• 29:19
  at the resource profile there with, with Pickle Crow, I think
• 29:23
  that's, you know, really only our 30%, it's bait.
• 29:27
  It's, that's, no, that's an out of date number there for sure.
• 29:30
  The resource number at Pickle Crow is now I think almost 3
• 29:33
  million oz. You know, our friends at at
• 29:38
  Firefly, formerly at Teco, spent 10s of millions of dollars
• 29:42
  drilling there over the course of the last two or three years.
• 29:46
  So, you know, they've now pivoted onto onto a copper
• 29:49
  project, which they're having great success with.
• 29:53
  But I think the reality is Pickle Crow still sits as one of
• 29:56
  the largest, best defined high grade underground deposits in
• 30:01
  Canada, you know, and one of the largest in the world, like 3
• 30:06
  million oz underground deposits are pretty rare.
• 30:10
  So I think they're doing, you know, they're doing great work
• 30:13
  there. We obviously we'd love to see a
• 30:16
  little bit more going, but our, you know, our position there and
• 30:19
  our position in Big Ridge or in, in Hopebrook as well.
• 30:22
  You know, when we negotiated our partners coming into those
• 30:25
  deals, we negotiated carried interest for ourselves.
• 30:27
  So while our partners spend money on the projects, our
• 30:31
  project interest doesn't dilute until, you know, at Hopebrook
• 30:35
  until they produce a feasibility study and at at Pickle Crow
• 30:39
  until they make a decision to mine, which is basically a
• 30:42
  construction decision. So in a great opportunities
• 30:45
  there, we, you know, we show in our investor presentation that
• 30:48
  those, those projects have, you know, value in the in sort of 20
• 30:53
  ish $1,000,000 range. And that's just based on the,
• 30:56
  you know, the share prices or the the value actually of
• 30:59
  Firefly before they bought the the project in Newfoundland, but
• 31:05
  in a good gold market, in a $2400 gold market.
• 31:08
  And in case any question, we're in a good gold market, right?
• 31:11
  Like there's no disputing, despite the fact that you have,
• 31:15
  you know, ETFs until recently, you've still been selling gold
• 31:18
  into a good gold market. We've got a good gold market.
• 31:21
  And these these projects will have immense value when we're
• 31:27
  able to tell the story about how, how our partners are going
• 31:31
  to unlock that value too. So, you know, could that be
• 31:35
  multiples of what we hold on the value?
• 31:37
  For sure, for sure. There's lots going on on those
• 31:39
  projects and again, just adds more leverage to an increasing
• 31:44
  gold price environment in first mining stock.
• 31:47
  Yeah, a more, a more sane and realistic valuation environment
• 31:52
  within the entire gold mining sector.
• 31:54
  And so many factors that are, that are pointing toward, I like
• 31:58
  to use the word of confluence of factors that could come
• 32:01
  together, help first mining gold, help the whole sector get
• 32:05
  back to, you know what I would say is more realistic valuation
• 32:09
  levels. If people want to learn more
• 32:11
  about the company, they can go to firstmininggold.com.
• 32:15
  If they want to talk to a real live human, we, we have a
• 32:19
  gentleman you can reach out to Paul Morris, the director of
• 32:22
  investor relations. Would you recommend people reach
• 32:24
  out to Paul? Absolutely, Paul is a is a
• 32:27
  wealth of information and can certainly guide you to any other
• 32:32
  information you might be looking for as an investor.
• 32:34
  So great, great resource. Yeah.
• 32:37
  Yeah. Well, thank you, Dan.
• 32:38
  On behalf of myself and the viewer, we've learned a lot
• 32:41
  today. It's going to be interesting to
• 32:43
  watch the gold market, the development market and in
• 32:46
  particular for me since I'm a shareholder first mining gold as
• 32:50
  well. Thank you and we'll look forward
• 32:53
  to seeing you next time. Thanks, Ron.
• 32:55
  Always a pleasure to be back and thanks for all that you do in
• 32:58
  terms of building and continuing to grow this community of of
• 33:02
  those of us who focus on precious metals.
• 33:04
  Really appreciate it. You're welcome.
• 33:06
  Thanks, Dan.